


Noli immiscere te draconum rebus

by AgarthanGuide, akathecentimetre



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Canon Era, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2636183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgarthanGuide/pseuds/AgarthanGuide, https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A boy traveling to Paris with a dragon is a dangerous proposition to begin with. But a boy with both a dragon and a score to settle? That opens up an entire new world of possibilities. </p><p>Part One, Chapter One of a series! This 'verse set in show-canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noli immiscere te draconum rebus

Two days after he buries his father at the inn, d’Artagnan leaves Planchet hidden in a copse deep in the Bois de Boulogne, shadowed by pines and mulberry only occasionally tended to by the king’s groundsmen. They land so silently that he has no fear of them being discovered; the only difficulty will be traversing the gates so he can enter Paris on foot after all, alone and shivering.

“You should sleep,” Planchet rumbles, but d’Artagnan cannot rest; he picks out his path, settles his swordhilt on his hip, thinks _Athos_. A long claw taps nervously at his side, hoping for attention and divergence, but, knowing this distraction, he simply waits until the wings fold and the scaled legs settle, and when he looks back, Planchet might as well be a dog raised at a warm hearth for all the danger he presents to d’Artagnan’s desire to leave.

“I will be back tomorrow,” d’Artagnan says, knowing, and not quite caring, that Planchet’s quiescence grows from guilt as much as obedience, for his not being there when he was needed most. “You will be safe here.”

“And hungry,” snorts Planchet, but there is no malice in it. “I will wait for you. Though I cannot promise I will not take my fill, should any other man venture here.”

“There will be no need,” d’Artagnan says, and feels the truth of it, hollow and dark in his chest, as he starts to walk.

He is halfway to the western gate of Paris, and quite alone on the dusty road, when the black dragon swoops down into his path, chattering excitedly as her sharp head sinews its way towards him, poking and prying, knocking him sideways. There are shards of ebony menacing like siege-traps from her scales, and though her eyes are wide and guileless her teeth are fine as razors.

“I heard you coming,” she clicks, dancing around him as he stands still and follows her with eyes alone; he knows what she means, knows all too well the pressure and shrieking sound of wings through air which must have forewarned his and Planchet’s arrival for leagues and leagues. “Oh! I was so excited, and you are so handsome,” she continues, practically wriggling with pathetic delight. “Oh, my mistress will be so pleased.”

“Your mistress?” he asks, dumbly, for though he is far from home he’s learned enough and heard enough to know that the king has no women in his most secret regiment.

He wakes up in Milady’s bed the next morning bewildered and pleased with himself beyond words. Briefly. But then the reality of the knife in his pillow and his father’s passing ruins it all – he should really have expected it by now – and as he stumbles through the marketplace with his ribs on fire he wishes he had never left Planchet, never thought that coming to Paris at all, of all the _stupid_ ideas a country boy with an illegal, undeclared dragon could have –

Coming to in Constance’s house feels like something of a blessing, though this, too, passes quickly. She stares at his torso, momentarily, before recovering herself, and he knows she is wondering at the scars of dragon fire and claw. They are not painful, indeed they never were even at the point of their infliction, but she cannot know that; and so she pities him, and he welcomes it, for it is the least he can do to accept his intrusion into her home on her terms.

But then she says “I know him,” when he mentions Athos, and in his turmoil, something of Constance’s beauty dims. He has little thought, now, but to conclude his revenge and return to what is left of his family, huddled, snuffling in its sleep, on a bed of pine needles; somehow, d’Artagnan knows, the only thing that will soothe his heart is the sharp cold of a wind hundreds of metres above the earth, to feel the touch of a dissolving cloud on his fingertips. The city streets, as he forces his way through the mass of the disinterested, presses him inwards, downwards. It is a relief to rediscover his temper and his wrath when the leather-clad figure in the yard turns at the sound of his name and declares himself.

d’Artagnan has never felt so easily understood – not since he first held a warm, dry, heavy little body in his two cupped hands and was first looked upon as a protector. His life has been too complicated, since, to expect comprehension or acceptance from many quarters. But Athos looks at him, and frowns, as though he is wondering not who d’Artagnan is but what it is exactly he has failed to accomplish, and the only way d’Artagnan can think of to stop him is to draw, and to fight, and possibly to die.

He sees it in Athos’s face, too – surprisingly open, for a man of the reputation d’Artagnan has heard – as he lies on his back with sword-points at his throat, and when the guards arrive d’Artagnan thinks, for the first time since his father was lost to him, that he wants to stop, here, and wait, and ask questions.

The guards prevent him, as does the presence of the others, for the conversation he craves is not one that would allow company. But as Athos hands his sword to Treville he takes a moment to step back to d’Artagnan: to grab him by the front of his doublet, to pull him in close, all for the world as if he is about to promise his own revenge.

“Find yourself something to cover up the smell, boy,” Athos murmurs. “You reek of its breath.”

And then he is gone, leaving d’Artagnan collapsing and astounded in the wake of the adrenaline that had been keeping him upright, left only with more puzzles.

*

When Porthos and Aramis find him, it is just as well that they all need to ride west to their destination, as he plans to find Planchet as soon as possible. His day apart is up, and he has learned all too well the dangers of breaking a promise to a dragon. He is nowhere, however, in terms of ideas of how to break it to Porthos and Aramis, who are, no doubt, not disposed to listen to wild tales that will distract them from their task, or their friend.

But, it emerges, he needn’t have worried, for the point is settled for them. The black dragon swoops down upon them well before they reach Boulogne: shrieking loud enough that she sends the Musketeers’ untrained horses into a panic, she dives, her claws narrowly avoiding Porthos’s head as she thuds to the ground and immediately heaves aloft again as the big musketeer curses rapidly, turning his skittish mount round in circles to try and give it direction, any direction, in which to flee. Aramis’s pistols ring out to but little effect as the bullets crack off of her scales, and d’Artagnan, searching frantically for her heartscale with his glass as she circles upwards, gasps as Planchet comes screaming down out of the low winter clouds.

The strange female dragon turns tail and flees without a sound – back to Milady? – not needing the threatening plunge of Planchet’s talons to hasten her retreat. It is a small mercy that Aramis has only half-reloaded his pistols by the time the blue-silver dragon crashes in to land and sweeps d’Artagnan under one wing, glowering dully at Porthos, whose size clearly makes him the larger threat.

“You are late, master,” Planchet rumbles, and Aramis’s hands still on his powder horn; his eyes widen just a fraction. Porthos is half-hidden behind his horse, but makes a noise of furious indignation nonetheless. “Are they her creatures?”

“No,” d’Artagnan says miserably, and, stroking the side of Planchet’s finely-boned nose, he tells the story quietly, entirely too wrapped up in the illusion of comfort afforded by the translucent wing he is covered by to care overmuch what the musketeers might think or do.

“So,” Planchet says, and his nostrils flare with distress. “We are to go back to that place?”

“Ain’t never seen one in the flesh before,” Porthos is murmuring to Aramis. “You?”

“Nor I. d’Artagnan,” Aramis adds, sternly, pulling d’Artagnan out of his stupor somewhat. “You are a registered _Cavalier_?”

“Someday, perhaps,” d’Artagnan shrugs. “If I am wanted, I will serve.”

“Oh, you will be wanted, that is sure,” Aramis replies, and there is a gleam in his eye which speaks of rampant curiosity as well as a certain fondness for the acts of a fool. “And not just by _our_ king. You came to Paris to seek a commission?”

“To aid my father,” he says, and can say no more. Next to Aramis, Porthos shifts and grunts; in contrast to his friend, he looks none too comfortable with their change in situation, or rather, with the presence of a ten-tonne harbinger of fire and death a few metres from his person.

“As much as this changes things, shouldn’t we be gettin’ on?”

Planchet follows them at a distance, high enough that he often cannot be seen either by his height or the weather, looping lazily in circles that eat up the time he must wait for them to catch up. And for the rest of the journey, Aramis does not stop talking: always with the hard edge of Athos’s absence beneath his voice, of course, for d’Artagnan is not so much a fool that he cannot see how unsettled both of his companions are, but also with a directness which d’Artagnan finds alternately refreshing and frightening.

“When did it hatch?”

_When I was seven. I found it in the verge on the edge of one of our fields, and when he hatched, he spoke to me, and to me alone._

“What does he eat?”  
  
_Surprisingly little, though his growth was prodigious. He never sought to be a burden, nor was he._

“Do you fly with him? Is he trained in combat?”

_Only if he so desires it, though he calls me master – only with my father, when he would shout for us to twirl and dance for him, and we set his fallow fields ablaze to leave behind only the healthiest, sooty fodder for the next year’s crop, and he found us delightful._

Aramis only quiets when d’Artagnan asks him a question of his own: how was it that Athos had recognized what he was, when there is no Musketeer who has ever become a Cavalier, or vice-versa? Aramis tilts his head, considering, and worries at his lower lip as they traverse a snowy path at a brisk canter, sure in his seat if not in his thoughts.

“I do not know,” he says finally, and to d’Artagnan’s surprise he wears a rueful smile. “Our Athos has his mysteries, as does any man. If there is anything that this very day has taught us, it is that a man may come across _les serpents du roi_ more easily than one might at first imagine.”

d’Artagnan finds himself thinking about that name for the – blessedly quiet – remainder of their journey. Are he, then, and Planchet, to become creatures of the king, to take their place in that storied and utterly dangerous, maddeningly secretive history?

He finds, as he approaches the innkeeper and dismounts, that the idea appeals to him. It is good, as he walks past his father’s shallow grave, already dotted with frost, to have something to aspire to.

It is more difficult, this time, to persuade Planchet to remain out of sight as they return into Paris to find Dujon, but he does so, huffing out clouds of steam as he waddles into some undergrowth and ragged trees only barely out of sight of the gate. By the time they make their way to the ruins and Constance has joined them, goosebumps flaring on her skin as she slips off her cloak and mutters her way angrily towards the guard at the drawbridge, d’Artagnan has been arguing with Porthos and Aramis for hours, trying to convince them to let Planchet scatter the soldiers with his dragon-fire, at least to flush Gaudet out into the open. It would be simple, it would be quick – it would, no doubt, have saved them a lot of trouble as well as the necessity of putting Constance, whose beauty he still cannot quite comprehend, in danger.

They deny him with a stream of nonchalant chatter, saying “We can handle them,” that it is for his own good, that to reveal the presence of a dragon would have the entire city up in arms – and not just the soldiers, for the people, too, have never grown and will never grow out of the stories of their childhood that promised terror and cremation to those who dared to question the King of France’s gift – given by God, most said – to command great beasts and the men skilled enough to take them into battle.

(d’Artagnan knows, of course, that every king claims this right over the dragons in his territories, and thinks, therefore, either that God has nothing to do with it, or that the Almighty must have a keen interest indeed in the politics of men. But, seeing Aramis’s little gestures of prayer, woven into his every movement, and Porthos’s unquestioning faith in Something or Other, he decides to keep his mouth shut on this point.)

At any rate, it is decided, without d’Artagnan’s input, that to have a horde of curious (or murderous, if they were to discover Planchet’s unattached state) Parisians descending upon them when there is work to be done is not to be borne, and so the dragon must remain hidden and the task at hand is their own. But d’Artagnan hears wings as he surges past Porthos and Aramis and into the ruins, sword in his hand and a scream on his lips: he doesn’t even have to ask or shout, but only sees the jet of flame course down into the courtyard, linking the campfires, scorching the deadened grass, until all that is left is the sight of Gaudet leaping to safety and straight into d’Artagnan’s path.

He feels heavy, finally, when he pulls his swordpoint out of Gaudet’s gut and lets him fall, and turns to see Constance looking terrified into the dark, her mouth hanging open, searching for wings.

“What – what was – ” she gasps as he approaches, and he tells her to meet him at the west gate at noon the next day, and promises he will tell her everything. She looks at him warily, shuts her mouth and pulls his doublet closer around her: she wants, he can see, to return to her husband, and, tonight, after this, not only for reasons of propriety.

They return to the Musketeer garrison yard a little after midnight, having towed the heavy cart full of bloodied uniforms through the mud-heavy streets. Treville wastes no time in surging up from his desk and collecting his sword, his badges of state, and orders Aramis and Porthos to make his horse ready for the ride to the palace to force Athos’s pardon. He calls d’Artagnan back with a quick, clipped word, however, and d’Artagnan feels keenly the precariousness of his position as he closes the door and stands with his feet together and hands at his sides, consciously attempting a foreign pose of submission and obedience.

“Athos informed me, before he was thrown in the Châtelet,” Treville starts, his tone hard with self-castigation and fury at anyone within reach of their collective failure, “that he believed you were in need of guidance, boy. That your presence in Paris was important, that the Musketeers had a duty to ensure your survival. What did he mean by it?”

The lie feels thick on his tongue, but it is of a sweet sort, cloying, giddying. “I came to Paris to seek a commission as a Cavalier, sir.”

A calculating gleam starts up in Treville’s eyes, and continues until they reach the palace, where, after the Captain receives Athos’s pardon from the yawning king just as the sky starts to lighten with the approaching dawn, Treville leans in close to the sovereign’s ear and, in soft, rumbling, respectful tones, requests one more service from His Majesty. Richelieu is nowhere to be found – the Musketeers, as they hurry out again, seem to have slipped through his net on this particular occasion – when Treville pulls d’Artagnan aside before he mounts his tired horse.

“The King will see you and your beast presented to him in the Bois de Boulogne this afternoon. Your preliminary commission will be ready by then. In the meantime,” the Captain continues, as he pulls a piece of parchment from his doublet, “sign here to begin your apprenticeship to the Musketeers, in d’Essart’s patrol.”

He sees the confusion in d’Artagnan’s face, and shakes his head quickly. “It’s either this or the Cardinal’s Red Guards, boy – you need a place for when you are in the city. It’s him or me. I cannot offer a commission, but I can offer you honest work, and brothers – ” here he looks sideways, to where Aramis and Porthos sit in their saddles, impatiently fidgeting – “who are worth fighting for.”

It takes only a moment, in the end, for d’Artagnan to decide. Treville rolls up the parchment quickly and efficiently before the ink of his signature is dry, and, with a nod of his head, gives d’Artagnan leave to depart with the others. When they find Athos, boneless and exhausted, against the stone wall of execution, d’Artagnan doesn’t know what to do with himself – Athos’s brief, mild look of interest is enough, for a moment, to make him think that perhaps, after a few hours of sleep, they will all be all right.

*

He meets Constance at the western gate just after noon. She looks as though she is not certain why she let herself come, arms hugged in close against the cold and head ducked suspiciously. He lets her take his saddle – which she is surprisingly comfortable in – and walks at his horse’s head, taking them out beyond the crowd of merchants pushing to be admitted past the tollkeepers, and points them towards Boulogne.

“I suppose I should have expected you to be mysterious,” she says eventually, sarcastically, as though she is not a married woman who has ventured out of the city in the company of what is, to all appearances and purposes, a young scoundrel. “It’s not often that someone shows up kissing strange women in the marketplace in the morning, and ends by fighting alongside the Musketeers in the evening.”

She reminds him, d’Artagnan realizes suddenly, of the sort of women he left back home – women with a touch of Basque in their blood, who are accustomed to finding room to govern their lives as they see fit, whether they are yet unmarried or are surrounded by their brood of husband and sons. There had been women who raised dragons in the south, too – or so the legends said. Women who did not ride the air, but whose beasts stayed coiled around their houses at night, who fought off warlords, who irrigated fields and adoringly trod grapes alongside their mistresses.

He thinks that Planchet will like her – if he is right about her, and she does not run, screaming.

He is proved right. Constance stays rooted to the saddle, her hands white around the pommel, as Planchet, smelling their approach through a nearby open field, powers his way out of the nearby trees and beats his way towards them, gliding a graceful curve downwards. He reaches out a curious neck, sniffs the air, and says, deeply, “Master has chosen wisely.”

Once both of them have finished spluttering, the color in Constance’s face looks a good deal healthier, and she slides down off of d’Artagnan’s horse and takes a few tentative, tripping steps towards the great wings, eyes shining. “Beautiful,” she murmurs, and Planchet hums a laugh in his throat. It reminds d’Artagnan of his father, that open-faced look of utmost trust and curiosity, free of fear, when facing the threat of death at the hands of teeth and claws and fire-breath.

“It seems we are to become Cavaliers, Planchet,” he says, rubbing a hand along the bony ridges at the top of the long, warm head. “How does that suit?”

“Is it good work?”

“I believe so,” d’Artagnan nods, as Constance coos at the little stretch of pleasure Planchet wriggles through when his chin is scratched. “It may even be a glorious one.”

“Oh, well then,” Planchet yawns, and butts his nose further into Constance’s hands. “I’m sure you know best. Will I stay here?”

“Do you like these woods?”

“Very much. And even more so now,” Planchet says fondly, and his tone as he looks down at Constance reminds d’Artagnan, as it has so many times before, of both the intimacy and the gulf of knowledge between himself, a mere mortal, and this in-credible creature.

Constance startles, then, as hoofbeats begin to rumble across the field, yet-unseen horses beginning to approach from behind a swelling hillock in the terrain. d’Artagnan helps her back into the saddle, and wordlessly points out the path she can take to rejoin the main road. “May I come and see you later?” he asks, and feels, suddenly, like his heart has risen to the mouth of his throat.

She considers, suddenly the housewife again, not quite meeting his gaze. “Yes, you will have to reclaim your horse,” she says eventually. “And – if you can afford the rent, my husband is not averse to the idea of lodgers.”

He cannot help the grin which breaks out across his face, and, behind him, Planchet swipes at d’Artagnan’s feet with his tail even as he keeps his large eyes fixed on the approaching royal party, knocking d’Artagnan’s feet out from underneath him. By the time he has struggled back to his feet and kicked plaintively at one of Planchet’s harder scales, however, neither of them feel much like laughing.

The king comes towards them on horseback, bereft of a large guard and in what is probably (for him) simple attire, attended only by a few: Treville, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, who are already in on the secret, and – sitting uneasily in his saddle, and visibly struggling to not look more and more thunderstruck the closer he rides – Cardinal Richelieu, still imperious in his robes of deep black and red.

“Well, I say,” the king says delightedly, and Planchet, who had sunk low and tense onto his haunches, begins to uncoil with d’Artagnan’s hand calm on his right wing. “What a sight this is! A fine beast, to be sure, Captain. And you say this young man holds promise?”

“He does.” It is Athos who has spoken, making d’Artagnan blink, though Porthos and Aramis do not seem surprised at this act of generosity. It is only now that d’Artagnan begins to notice the formality of Athos’s bearing, the closeness of posture between him and Treville, and he starts to realize that Treville’s motives for saving this man from the firing squad were legion. “I believe Your Majesty may depend upon his confidence.”

“And are you willing?”

It takes a moment for d’Artagnan, country boy that he is, that yes, this is happening: that his sovereign is addressing him, and expects his reply on almost equal terms. “I am,” he stammers finally, and beside him Planchet shifts, pressing a heavy side into his leg, keeping him grounded.

“Splendid,” the king says, and jumps off of his horse like a boy at play; Treville, too, dismounts, and, unsheathing his sword, hands it hilt-first to Louis. d’Artagnan falls to his knees like a puppet whose strings have been cut, and, over the king’s shoulder, he sees Porthos chuckling good-naturedly.

_Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun saluament, d'ist di in auant, in quant Deus sauir et podir me dunat…_

The old French feels faintly familiar in his mouth, not so far from Gascon that he can mistake its meaning, its age, and its power. He is surprised, therefore, to realize that when he has finished swearing the oath of loyalty and secrecy, he feels little different despite the quiet hum of satisfaction emanating from Planchet against his side.

“I congratulate your Majesty,” the Cardinal grits out, his cold eyes sweeping d’Artagnan up and down, as Louis picks the sword up off of d’Artagnan’s shoulders and puts it back into Treville’s waiting hand. “A most unexpected coup.”

“Indeed,” Louis says ebulliently, tossing his wig over his shoulder as Aramis dutifully helps him to re-mount. “I suppose you think it’s a pity you didn’t find him first, eh, Armand? My old fox has outwitted you once again.”

“And he deserves your praise for it, I’m sure,” Richelieu says icily. He submits himself, nonetheless, to the King’s merry laughter as the monarch and his two advisors turn and begin to canter leisurely back across the field – soon they are out of earshot, and it is just d’Artagnan left next to Planchet, and three musketeers looking at him with something approaching exasperated fondness.

“You do have a gift for getting in trouble,” Aramis starts, and d’Artagnan is about to start on a tirade of his own about executions and doppelgangers and deception and turning respectable women into ladies of the night, but deflates, suddenly, at the note of hard perception in Athos’s eye which reminds him of Milady, and the bloody knife in his pillow, and of the fact that he has utterly no idea what is to come next for him, now.

“You have nothing to fear,” Athos says, not unkindly, though with an undertone of warning which d’Artagnan understands as a message not to ask him any undue questions – not yet, at least, and not in the presence of others, though d’Artagnan fully intends to get close enough to him some day to see if the scent of dragon-wind lives in his leathers, too. “The king treats his Cavaliers with kindness, even a sort of respect. He has to, after all, to maintain their loyalty – though I doubt yours will ever be considered suspect.”

“Come on, then,” Porthos says, pointing, and d’Artagnan turns to see that Planchet’s forked tail is twitching, his eyes fixed on a flock of birds winging its way lazily across the meadow. “Let’s see you fly, then. I’ve been dyin’ to see whether you’ll fall off at the first time of askin’.”

“Oh? Try me,” d’Artagnan says, leaping to his feet, and just like that, life surges through him again, the eagerness to have his mouth go dry with the wind he swallows propelling him onto Planchet’s back, just between two scales which have molded, over the years, to his shape. Athos backs his horse up calmly as Planchet crouches, already aware, it seems, that as the dragon takes off and d’Artagnan lurches through the first moments of imbalance, his trajectory will take them straight through where the musketeer’s mount would have been standing.

They power upwards just as the sun emerges from behind a bank of cloud, and just at the limits of his vision, d’Artagnan begins to see Paris spread out before him, an uncut jewel in its haphazard angles. He can do nothing but turn Planchet away, to fly south or west, for it cannot be theirs – but this, he knows, as the landscape stretches out beneath them: the rest of it will never be anyone else’s.

*

[](http://i.imgur.com/P1xu6Vl.jpg)  
"Planchet" by [JakartaInn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JakartaInn/pseuds/JakartaInn)/[agarthanguide](http://agarthanguide.tumblr.com/). Click for full-size.

*

**Author's Note:**

> _This chapter Brought To You By: three months of procastination and writer's block, followed by a week of anxiety, Benjamin Britten, and several bottles of hard cider._
> 
> Phew. Hi, everyone! I've been gone from serious ficcing for far too long, for which I am squarely blaming RL; and I want to thank everyone who left me comments and kudos in the last few months for sticking with me. This is the start of the first fic in what I hope might become a sprawling series of dragon-themed AUs/ARs for the fandom. I had originally thought this would be a NaNoWriMo project, but somehow I doubt that might come to pass - we'll see. Otherwise, since this first 'verse is set in show-canon, there aren't many notes to add except that this world is based on an amazing fanvid, '[From Ashes](http://samhawke.tumblr.com/post/97967062391/from-ahes-the-musketeers-au),' by [samhawke](http://samhawke.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. I cannot gush about it enough! And, of course, Planchet is the name of d'Artagnan's lackey in the original _Three Musketeers_ book. Watch this space for some more original Dumas characters. The Old French text was a section of the ninth-century [Oaths of Strasbourg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_Strasbourg) and can be translated "For the love of God and Christendom and the salvation of us both, from this day on, as God will give me the wisdom and power..."
> 
> The title of this fic translates from the Latin as 'Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,' and the title of the overall series refers to the (probably mythical) warning on pre-modern maps that would warn travelers of monsters - i.e. 'Here be dragons.' Part 1 of dragon-'verse #2 will be the next piece of the project to be posted, and will be titled ' _Palmam qui meruit ferat: Trafalgar_.'


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